Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

xxito retain their identity but at the same time respondto features of a predominantly Christian urbanlife. These social realities are difficult to reduce intoconceptual frameworks. Velasco shows this to be thecase of the current frameworks used in understandingthe issues in borderzones. One framework’s lack ofrecognition of problems is prologue to the search forsolutions. Another’s uncritical problematization of thephenomenon colors all the initiatives aimed at solvingthe perceived problem. It is time, she points out, for apeople-centered perspective on the borderzone.Alwin Aguirre’s presentation of Indonesian andJapanese science fictionists’ alter-conceptions of sociallife acknowledges a form of hybridization in theimagination of social life that results from the interfacebetween science and technology and the social world.His discussion of science fiction focuses on the extentto which hybrid imaginations of the future depart fromthe Western tradition of science fiction and insteadadvance visions of tomorrow that truly reflect an Asianagenda for alternative life.Refiguration of identities and futures in times oftransformationImages and texts reconstruct the social reality that theyrepresent and in doing so contribute to social processes,including the construction of identity and meaning.Yoshiko Shimada’s interactive art project which sheconducted in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesiademonstrates how the unmasking of refigured identitiesin a changing world can proceed as a consciousengagement of the private and public binary. Throughthe exercise of unveiling public secrets, she providesan example of how art can fulfill a cathartic role whilesociety awaits structural changes that take longer torealize.Myfel Joseph Paluga offers insights into how humansocieties construct their identities by selectively reservinga space for animals in their social life. As society changesand as animal-relating practices change with it, Palugasuggests putting everyday phenomena under scientificscrutiny to “calibrate traditional views and practices tothe actual lives of…animals.”Iskandar Sharifuddin Bin Mohd. Said and KaoriFushiki show that the reconstitution of social identitycan be motivated by the project of nation-building orof marking one’s society as distinct and different fromothers. Iskandar Sharifuddin Bin Mohd. Said detailshow the state, through films, manufactures the factsof the nation and how films lending themselves in thisexercise do not only serve the state or any organizedpower. A film that inspires discussion long after itsscreening allows the audience to manufacture factsthemselves. Cultural politics and its many forms isalso the subject of Fushiki’s examination of a recentsurge in the promotion of “Balineseness” through theperforming arts. Her work portrays the tensions createdby this movement: on the one hand, it instills a pride oftradition and of place; on the other, it breeds stultifyingethnocentrism.Specificities of globalizationGlobalization may be viewed as the convergenttransformation of particular entities (e.g., continents,nations, villages, companies, organizations, individuals).Supa Yaimuang contributes to an understanding ofglobalization as a lived and contextual experience bylooking at Indonesian and Japanese farmers’ response tochanges that are underway in the agricultural sector: thesustainable agricultural movement. Her documentationof sustainable production and consumption methodscharacterizes the sustainable agricultural system as arecognition of the wisdom of the past.I Ketut Gunawan’s work generates a deeper appreciationof globalization as an overarching reality for nonstateterror groups in Southeast Asia, particularly inIndonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. These groups,he points out, have built networks, including virtualones, which spill over national territorial boundaries infurtherance of their goals.Krisnadi Yuliawan Saptadi contributes to anunderstanding of globalization through its workings incinema wherein “the nature of film production is reallydifficult to keep within one country because creativitycannot be kept within one country’s boundaries.” Heshows that cinematic representation and experience inJapan and Thailand are dialogues with Hollywood, inwhich the resistance to Hollywood’s “domination” is ada capo theme and the Asianization of cinema is a robustproject. Sing Suwannakij likewise offers his thoughts ona paradox case of the globalization of representation:what one knows about Japanese spirituality goes througha Western sieve and can differ from what the Japaneseactually perceive and practice; yet, the ensuing reality ismore complex as these representations are consumed bythe locals themselves.Mohd. Naguib Razak joins Suwannakij in attempts “todiscover, unravel and understand spirituality in Japan’smaterial utopia,” an insoluble condition of spiritualityand materialism that arises both from Japan’s endogenousAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows